THE HEADPHONE SOCKET IS IN ITS LAST DAYS
Over the past fifteen years, electronic devices have made a dramatic leap towards a fully digital interface. Take a look – there are practically no analog connections even in everyday life! Screens, digital communication with a printer and mouse, digital storage devices have gone digital. However, not everything has been replaced. Grab a smartphone and you will immediately find that it is practically the only thing that has not yet been replaced. An “analog hole”, literally: a headphone jack or just a jack. But his time has come.
Jack is not even an invention of the 20th century, but the 19th century. According to legend, it appeared simultaneously with large telephone exchanges in the last quarter of the 19th century. At that time there was no automatic subscriber-subscriber switch, the problem was solved by live operators, manually connecting the required channels. Later, in the mid-20th century, with the advent of portable audio equipment, the connector began to shrink: the 1/4-inch diameter was reduced to 1/8 (from 6.35 to 3.5 mm, respectively), and then to 2.5 mm. And in the digital age, it also diversified in terms of the number of contacts: instead of the usual two or three (for stereo), a fourth appeared for the microphone, in addition manufacturers began to change the location of the contacts on the pin at will. However, the main thing is that the principle of operation has remained unchanged all this time: A classic connector is a simple wired connection from a source of electrical voltage to a speaker that actually generates sound. And the further, the more criticism it provoked.
No, normal users are still quite satisfied with it. Analog audio output is simple, reliable and mechanically robust, inexpensive and, with a few caveats, versatile. But manufacturers see it differently.
Jack is too big by today’s standards. In modern electronics, even a 3.5mm jack with only three contacts seems too large (for comparison: there are 8 contacts on the Lightning connector and up to 24 on the USB-C connector). And inside there are even more problems. Since this is an analog interface, it must be protected from parasitic pickups (i.e. correctly positioned, designed and installed in the electrical circuit), otherwise the sound quality will suffer. It is relatively “stupid”: it gives almost no feedback, so a smartphone, for example, cannot learn anything about a headset connected through a connector, except for the fact that it is connected. In an age of “smart” things, in an age where designers fight for every cubic millimeter and strive for universality, such waste and anachronism are unacceptable!
The decision suggests itself and you understand what, but it was really difficult to decide on this step. Headphone sales alone are measured in billions of dollars a year. Imagine how many of them are available! And telling all these people that the jack is outdated, that with new devices they will need new headphones / earphones, you are guaranteed to have problems. But the time has come.
Over the past month, it became apparent that an attack on analog audio was in the works. Not as coordinated as we would like, but still involving electronics leaders: Independently from each other, Intel and Apple plan to replace the connector with digital interfaces. Apple is still in the rumor stage. The leaks show that the iPhone 7 / 7S, which is expected to be released this fall, lacks a jack. Instead, the Lightning port will presumably be used. Intel officially proposes to replace the jack with USB-C (which in most cases can be considered the equivalent to USB 3) and is already working on the corresponding standard, promising to present the results in the second quarter.
What does this all mean? First of all, for digital devices of model 2017 and above, users will need new headphones / earphones or at least one adapter. This means that the price of the “ears” will increase: the digital interface requires its own audio amplifier and communication chip. But this means both higher sound quality (in itself, digital-to-analog conversion directly at the point of consumption, this guarantees) and higher “intelligence” (in “smart” headphones, you can implement playback control functions more complex, from rewinding to suppressing noise; in addition, they will be able to perform fundamentally new functions, for example, monitoring the human body, which is useful for people involved in sports) and, in general, the
